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There was something in her gaze, something I should have asked about. She looked...worried? Or like something was on her mind. I couldn’t find the right words to inquire, and the worry moved from her expression as I watched. My own happiness was a visceral thing, moving through me, overwhelming every thought, every worry.
I’d never felt happier than I did with Emily in my arms.
We continued that way for the next few days, Emily and I taking our own paths during the day but coming together at night, in her room or mine, to have mind-blowing sex and to talk about anything and everything. Despite the quiet of the guest load at the resort, Aubrey had kept things tense by announcing that she still intended to have a wedding, though she was less equipped to help pull it together than I’d hoped she would be when we’dmade the initial plan. I raced around like a crazy man trying to ensure my sister’s desires would all be met.
During those days, Emily said she was making good progress on her story, building the background of the resort and the details of the hunt so far. I’d happily handed over all the artifacts of the hunt for her to review again, hoping they’d help her or that she’d find some new clue we’d missed.
Through it all, I had that same sense that something was there, some last bit of hesitation inside Emily, preventing her from giving me one hundred percent of herself, but I was too happy to worry about it.
I was relieved that Aubrey had relented on dragging everyone including Finn out to the arch, which would now involve a snowy trek and a lot of people standing in the freezing cold. Instead, she’d agreed to using the back patio for the ceremony and the restaurant for the reception.
Aubrey had made a point of inviting Emily, and had even asked for her help with a few details, which had gotten Emily out of her room and involved with the other staff—my friends. I loved seeing her with them and marveled at how easily she fit into our family here. It was impossible not to think about asking her to stay, or asking if there wasn’t some other way we could be together in the future. I just had to figure out how to word it.
The evening before the wedding, most of us were gathered in the bar, Aubrey and Wiley having brought tiny Finn in a little cocoon-like thing that Wiley wore strapped to his chest. I didn’t think I’d ever seen the guy look prouder.
“So it’s not a number?” Lucy was asking Monroe and Brainiac, who had finally gotten around to playing with the photo Emily had taken.
“I don’t think it is,” Brainiac told her, turning his laptop screen so she could see it.
Fake Tom peered over his wife’s shoulder and squinted at the screen. “The fives are letters.”
“Oooh,” Emily said, joining them. “So it isn’t 525. It’s S-2-S.”
“Well, that clears things right up,” Aubrey said, rolling her eyes. “Uncle Marv was off his rocker.”
“That’s been established,” I pointed out. “But I think he probably had something in mind here.”
“We just have to figure out what it is,” Emily said. I watched as she debated with Lucy and Brainiac, chatted with my sister, and fell so naturally into the group of us that it almost felt like she had been here all along.
I wanted to solve the hunt for her because I knew it was what she wanted—it was her make or break moment. But when I’d brought up my stress over not making progress quickly enough to ensure she’d get the final piece, she’d told me not to worry about the progress. She said there was plenty of backstory and enough details that it was already turning into a compelling read—even if we didn’t actually solve the puzzle my uncle had left.
But I wanted to. Not just for us, but for her. I wanted to give her that. In fact, increasingly, I was finding there were many more things I wanted to give her, but I knew it was still very early. And there was still something there, something I couldn’t figure out, but it was some final piece between us. Maybe it was Emily’s worry about our different geographies, or maybe it was just the importance of the cover piece she was working on.
We’d grown closer over these last days, talking long into the nights about our lives, our families. I wanted to meet her parents—the mother who’d given up a storied career as a chef to raise Emily, and the father who was stern and stoic, but who she loved with all her heart. Maybe it was the loss of my own parents so long ago that made the idea of hers so intriguing. Or maybe it was just my curiosity to meet the people who’d created the woman I was falling in love with.
I didn’t want to rush things, but increasingly, I was starting to see that my future didn’t lie here at Kasper Ridge. My future lay with Emily. If she agreed, of course.
Looking at her now, laughing with my friends, I suspected she would.
That night, we lay together in my bed, the moonlight from outside the window slicing across the foot of the bed and creating a glow in the room.
“What will you do when you get back to San Diego?” I asked, hoping to lead into a conversation about the future. About us.
“Well,” she drew the word out, as if thinking about it. “Turn in my story, which will depend on whether we solve this thing.” She traced circles on my chest as she talked, her warm body nestled at my side. “And I’ll need to prep my parents a bit for the idea of me leaving San Diego.”
“They want you to stay?”
I felt her stiffen slightly beneath me, but then she rolled over, covering me with her naked body. “They worry,” she said. “And I worry about them.”
I wanted to ask more questions, to understand what might keep the parents of an ambitious and capable woman in her mid-twenties from releasing her to explore her life, and the world. But Emily had other ideas, and within a few minutes, she’d slithered down my body and my mind scattered.
Chapter Twenty-One
When You Need Goldfish, You Cannot Wait
EMILY
Every minute that ticked by grew the guilt I carried, but each minute also solidified that I didn’t want to lose what Archie and I had. And the longer I waited to tell him the truth, the more of a betrayal I created. But it was impossible to convince myself to give up the warm acceptance and joy I’d begun to feel in this little Kasper Ridge family.
